Solidarity was Legacy’s most successful combo deck to be based on High Tide. It uses High Tide along with Reset and Turnabout as untap effects to generate mana. It would then play draw spells to continue this sequence of draw spells and untap effects to generate enough storm for Brain Freeze or enough mana to win with Stroke of Genius. Its unique strategy of playing only lands and instants made it a difficult deck to combat, and for its time it may have been one of Legacy’s best decks.
Solidarity
David Gearhart
2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
2 Flash Of Insight
4 Force Of Will
4 High Tide
4 Impulse
3 Meditate
2 Opt
2 Peek
4 Remand
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
1 Twincast
12 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
Sideboard:
2 Brain Freeze
1 Chain Of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
4 Hydroblast
1 Meditate
1 Rebuild
1 Stroke Of Genius
1 Turnabout
3 Twincast
Today, that isn’t the case at all. Solidarity has largely disappeared as a deck to be concerned with when entering a Legacy tournament. There is little chance that someone will be playing it, and it’s highly unlikely that you will see the deck in the Top 8 of any given tournament. High Tide combo has largely receded into the background while combo decks based on Dark Ritual, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor, and most recently Ad Nauseam have come to the forefront.
This lack of recent success does not mean that Solidarity (or any High Tide deck) is doomed to failure, but rather that any High Tide deck has to address the challenges that are presented by Legacy’s current metagame.
Spring Tide
What is probably less known is that there is sorcery speed version of Solidarity known as Spring Tide. It does not need to run all instants because it does not use Reset (Reset can only be played on your opponent’s turn). Instead it opts for powerful sorceries such as Merchant Scroll and other untap effects, namely Cloud of Faeries and Snap. Here is Sebastian Ofner’s list from Day 2 of Grand Prix: Lille in 2005 —
Spring Tide
Sebastian Ofner
4 Flooded Strand
10 Island
2 Polluted Delta
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
1 Cunning Wish
3 Force of Will
4 High Tide
4 Ideas Unbound
4 Meditate
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Misdirection
3 Serum Visions
3 Sleight of Hand
4 Snap
3 Turnabout
Sideboard
2 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Defense Grid
1 Echoing Truth
1 Gaea’s Blessing
4 Hydroblast
1 Rebuild
1 Stifle
1 Stroke of Genius
Despite Sebastian success with the deck, it never really made very many Top 8s. It is quite possible that the success of Solidarity hindered the development of Spring Tide. Spring Tide was at a severe disadvantage in the mirror match, with Solidarity being able to combo on the opponent’s turn using their High Tide to win the game.
Spring Tide also had some issues that Solidarity did not. Spring Tide was vulnerable to creature removal. The ability to kill Cloud of Faeries in response to a Snap could severely hinder its ability to untap its lands. It untap effects also were weaker than Solidarity’s. Cloud of Faeries and Snap only untapped two lands, unlike Reset, which could untap all your lands for the same amount of mana. Spring Tide would sometimes fizzle without enough mana to continue the combo because its untap effects didn’t generate enough mana.
Spring Tide did have some advantages over Solidarity. Merchant Scroll was one of the biggest advantages. Merchant Scroll allows the deck to find High Tide more reliably and earlier in the game. It means that winning on turn 3 is more likely with Spring Tide than Solidarity, because there are essentially 8 copies of High Tide in the deck instead of 4.
Since Spring Tide would win on its own turn, it would almost always just need to cast a lethal Brain Freeze and pass the turn to an opponent who had no library. Solidarity would win usually on its opponent’s turn, and often when facing lethal damage. It would have to either cast Brain Freeze and a Turnabout to tap its opponent’s creatures, or a Brain Freeze followed by Stroke of Genius to immediately kill its opponent.
Since Solidarity and Spring Tide were not really viable in their current form, was their some way to have the best of both decks? To both have powerful untap effects and still have access to powerful sorceries such as Merchant Scroll? It seemed too difficult to reconcile playing Reset with sorceries, and Solidarity did not look like the place to start, but perhaps there were just other ways to untap lands in Spring Tide.
When searching for possible untap effects I came across this old artifact from Antiquities, which lets you pay X to untap X lands. It also only costs 1 mana to cast initially. With High Tide in play this was essentially an artifact that was similar in effect to Turnabout in that it untapped all your lands. I came to Alix Hatfield with the idea, because he had done much of the initial development of Spring Tide and was involved in the development of Solidarity. His initial thoughts were that it seemed like a good idea. While working on this new build, I saw that a Source member, Morim_Brightsmoke, suggested the idea of Candelabra of Tawnos in the Spring Tide thread. His idea didn’t get much traction in the thread, but I was still working on it trying to find out if Candelabra was good enough before posting.
Here is one of my earliest versions of Spring Tide with Candelabra —
4 Brainstorm
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Meditate
3 Ideas Unbound
2 Cunning Wish
1 Brain Freeze
3 Turnabout
4 Cloud of Faeries
3 Candelabra of Tawnos
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
8 Island
1 Tundra
The only real change from Sebastian’s list is the inclusion of 3 Candelabras instead of Snap. Replacing Snap removes the problem of creature removal and allows the untapping of all your lands. This version did very poorly for me in local tournaments, but Candelabra of Tawnos was one of the few bright spots in the deck. It was almost always generated plenty of mana to continue playing spells. The deck still seemed to suffer from inconsistencies and was struggling beat any of the best decks.
It was at first difficult to figure out where exactly the problems were with the deck. It has more card advantage spells than Solidarity, with Ideas Unbound in addition to Meditate. It has a direct tutor for High Tide in Merchant Scroll. Even its cantrips were slightly stronger, digging deeper with Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand instead of Opt and Peek. The untap effects were still a problem, specifically Cloud of Faeries. It only untaps two of your lands, which often means that you need to find another tap effect soon after to continue the combo. Replacing Cloud of Faeries was the next step, but there did not seem to an adequate replacement. Development on this version languished for quite some time.
Mind over Matter…
On June 1st 2007, DCI banned Flash in the aftermath of the GP: Columbus, but it also chose to unban Replenish and Mind over Matter. While most of the attention was on Flash being banned (for obvious reasons), the unbanning of Mind Over Matter gave Spring Tide a chance to replace Cloud of Faeries as an untap effect in the deck.
At six mana the card is a very expensive, but also very powerful. Once you resolve Mind Over Matter, you do not need to resolve any other untap effect as long as you have enough cards to discard to continue playing spells. With all of the card advantage in the deck, this should not be a difficult thing to do under most circumstances. It is also worth noting that Mind Over Matter can untap Candelabra of Tawnos generating more mana while discarding fewer cards. Along with Turnabout, all the untap effects in the deck could now untap all of the lands.
Permanent Waves
Candelabra of Tawnos, and especially Mind Over Matter, increased the cost of the untap effects and the need for more lands. One of the changes was to go up to 18 lands instead of the 16 in the original list and the 17 in list with Candelabra but no Mind Over Matter. Eighteen lands is the same number that most of the builds of Solidarity would run.
Mind Over Matter combined with Candelabra of Tawnos allows the deck generate so much mana that it does not need to rely on Brain Freeze as its primary win condition. It can instead use Stroke of Genius to win the game immediately. Stroke of Genius has the added benefit of being a draw spell during mid-combo that doubles as a better win condition.
This deck became different enough from the original builds of Spring Tide to deserve its own name. This deck is named for the 1980 Rush album of the same name. The reasoning behind the name is that this deck, unlike its predecessor, uses permanents to untap its lands and sometimes its artifacts.
Lands (9)
Spells (51)
- 1 Stroke of Genius
- 4 Brainstorm
- 2 Mind Over Matter
- 4 Force of Will
- 3 Meditate
- 9 Island
- 3 Impulse
- 3 Cunning Wish
- 4 Merchant Scroll
- 3 Turnabout
- 4 High Tide
- 4 Candelabra of Tawnos
- 3 Ideas Unbound
- 4 Ponder
Sideboard
The light Green splash is mainly for Krosan Grip, which answers one of the most difficult cards for the deck to deal with, Counterbalance. This does open the deck slightly to Wasteland and a little more to Stifle with 8 fetchlands, but this seems to an acceptable tradeoff when given the alternative of having only Wipe Away to deal with Counterbalance.
Sample Hands
Here are a couple of opening hands, along with how to setup and play out the combo just to get a feel for how the deck would work. These games don’t involve any interactions, so going off against disruption or countermagic is a completely different story.
Hand #1
Candelabra of Tawnos
Impulse
Brainstorm
Polluted Delta
Island
Island
Island
This hand obviously has quite a bit of land, but with Brainstorm along with the fetchland it should not be too difficult to shuffle away any excess lands. Let’s say that we decide to keep this hand.
Turn 1)
Island
Turn 2)
Draw Ponder
Play Ponder (Seeing Turnabout, Brainstorm, Candelabra), Shuffle, Draw Brainstorm
Play Island
Turn 3)
Draw Flooded Strand
Play Brainstorm, Draw High Tide, Island, Polluted Delta (put back Island, Polluted Delta)
Activate Polluted Delta, Play Impulse (Force of Will, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, Island) Take Force of Will
Turn 4)
Draw Ponder
Play Flooded Strand
Tap Island, Play High Tide
Tap Island floating UU, Play Brainstorm, Draw Ponder, Ideas Unbound, Meditate (put back Force of Will and Island
Activate Flooded Strand
Use U floating to play Candelabra
Taps 2 Island to float UUUU, Activate Candelabra to untap 4 Islands
Tap Island floating UU, Play Ponder (Seeing Island, Flooded Strand, Ponder), Shuffle, Draw Merchant Scroll
Play Ponder with the U floating (Seeing Candelabra, Turnabout, Ideas Unbound) Put back as Turnabout, Candelabra, Ideas Unbound, Draw Turnabout
Tap Island to Play Ideas Unbound, Draw Candelabra, Ideas Unbound, Meditate
Tap 2 Islands to Play Turnabout untapping 4 Islands
Tap Island to Play Merchant Scroll finding High Tide
Tap Island floating UU to play High Tide (all Islands produce 3)
Tap Island floating UUUU play Ideas Unbound, Draw Stroke of Genius, High Tide, Ponder
Use U of the UU floating to play High Tide (all Islands produce 4)
Use the last U floating to play Candelabra of Tawnos
Tap the only untapped Island for UUUU to activate Candelabra of Tawnos and untap 4 Islands
Tap Island floating UUUU play Ponder (Seeing High Tide, Polluted Delta, Force of Will), Put back in same order and Draw High Tide
Play High Tide still floating UU (All Islands produce 5)
Tap Island floating 7 blue, Play Meditate, Draw Polluted Delta, Force of Will, Meditate, Mind over Matter
Tap Island floating 9 blue, Play Mind over Matter
Use the last 3 floating to Meditate, Draw Candelabra of Tawnos, Turnabout, Flooded Strand, Island
Tap Island for 5 blue cast Candelabra and untap 4 Islands
Discard Island to Mind over Matter to untap Candelabra of Tawnos
Tap 4 Islands for 20 blue, Use 4 mana to activate Candelabra, and untap 4 Islands floating 16 mana
Discard Flooded Strand to Mind over Matter to untap Candelabra
Tap 4 Islands for 20 blue plus the 16 floating for 36 floating, Use 4 mana to activate Candelabra, and untap 4 Islands, floating 32
Discards Polluted Delta to Mind over Matter to untap Candelabra
Tap 4 Islands for a total 52 mana floating, Use 4 mana to activate Candelabra, and untap 4 Islands floating 48
Tap 4 Islands floating 68, Cast Stroke of Genius on your opponent forcing them to draw 60 cards
Hand #2
Impulse
Ponder
High Tide
Merchant Scroll
Island
Stroke of Genius
Brainstorm
This is a very good with High Tide along with plenty of draw to find more lands and Merchant Scroll to tutor for whatever we might need.
Turn 1)
Island, Play Ponder (Seeing Island, Island, Ideas Unbound), put back in same order and Draw Island
Turn 2)
Draw Island
Island, Merchant Scroll for High Tide #2
Turn 3)
Draw Ideas Unbound
Play Impulse (Seeing High Tide, Turnabout, Ponder, and Candelabra) Take Turnabout
Play Island
Turn 4)
Draw Flooded Strand
Play Flooded Strand
Tap Island, Play High Tide (All Islands produce 2)
Tap Island floating UU, Play High Tide #2 (All Islands produce 3)
Use the last U floating to play Brainstorm, Draw Brainstorm, Island, Cunning Wish, Put back Island and Stroke of Genius
Activate Flooded Strand
Tap Island floating UUU, Play Ideas Unbound, Draw Stroke of Genius, Merchant Scroll, and Polluted Delta
Tap Island floating 4 blue, Play Turnabout untapping 4 Islands
Tap Island floating UUU, play Brainstorm, Draw Island, Candelabra, High Tide, put back Island and Polluted Delta
Play High Tide with U floating (All Islands produce 4)
Tap Island floating 5 blue, Play Merchant Scroll for Turnabout
Tap 3 Islands floating 15 blue, Play Candelabra and Activate to untap 4 Islands floating 10 blue
Tap 4 Islands floating total of 16 blue , Play Turnabout untapping 4 Islands floating 12 blue
Tap 2 Islands for total of 20 floating, Play Stroke of Genius targetting yourself and Draw 17 cards
With these 17 cards the deck should have no problem generating more than enough mana to Cunning Wish for the remaining Stroke of Genius in the sidebaord to win the game
Hand #3
Flooded Strand
Polluted Delta
Ponder
Brainstorm
Force of Will
Meditate
This is a fine hand, with cantrips and Force of Will to answer anything threatening your opponent might do.
Turn 1)
Play and activate Flooded Strand
Play Ponder (Seeing Ponder, Impulse, Polluted Delta), putting them back in that order, Draw Ponder
Turn 2)
Draw Impulse
Play and activate Polluted Delta
Play Impulse (Seeing Polluted Delta, Mind over Matter, High Tide, Force of Will), Take High Tide
Turn 3)
Draw Island
Play Ponder (Seeing Island, Ponder, Cunning Wish), Shuffle, Draw Ideas Unbound
Play Brainstorm, Draw Polluted Delta, Polluted Delta, Impulse, Put back Island and Force of Will
Play and activate Polluted Delta
Turn 4)
Draw Force of Will
Play and activate Polluted Delta
Tap Island, Play High Tide (All Islands produce 2)
Tap Island, Play Impulse (Seeing Force of Will, Island, Ponder, Turnabout), Take Turnabout
Tap 2 Islands and cast Turnabout untapping 4 Islands
Tap Island, Play Ideas Unbound, Draw Meditate, High Tide, Brainstorm
Tap Island, Play High Tide (All Islands produce 3) floating U
Tap Island, Play Meditate floating U, Draw Candelabra, Force of Will, Island, and Turnabout
Tap Island, Play Turnabout untapping 4 Islands with 0 floating
Tap Island, Play Meditate, Draw Mind over Matter, High Tide, Cunning Wish, Brainstorm
Tap Island Play High Tide (All Islands produce 4), Play Brainstorm floating U, Draw Flooded Strand, Impulse, Cunning Wish, Put back Flooded Strand and Island
Tap Island floating 5 blue, Play Impulse (Seeing Flooded Strand, Island, Ideas Unbound, Island), Take Ideas Unbound
Play Candelabra floating UU, Tap 2 Islands floating 10 blue, Activate Candelabra paying 4 mana, and untapping 4 Islands with 6 blue floating
Play Ideas Unbound floating 4 blue, Draw Tropical Island, Merchant Scroll, Island
Play Brainstorm floating 3 mana, Draw Flooded Strand, Merchant Scroll, Flooded Strand, Put back 2x Flooded Strand
Play Merchant Scroll with U floating
Play High Tide (All Islands produce 5)
Tap 2 Islands, Play Mind over Matter floating 4 blue
Discard Tropical Island to Mind over Matter untapping Candelabra
Tap 2 Islands floating a total of 14 blue, use 4 mana to activate Candelabra, and untap 4 Islands floating 10 blue
Discard Island to Mind over Matter untapping Candelabra
Tap 4 Islands floating a total of 30 mana, use 4 mana to activate Candelabra untapping 4 Islands, floating 26 blue
Discard Force of Will to Mind over Matter untapping Candelabra
Tap 4 Islands floating a total of 46 blue, use 4 mana to activate Candelabra untapping 4 Islands, floating 42 blue
Discard Force of Will to Mind over Matter, untapping Candelabra
Tap 4 Islands floating a total of 62, use 4 mana to activate Candelabra untapping 4 Islands, floating 58 blue
Play Cunning Wish for Stroke of Genius
Tap 2 Islands floating a total of 65 mana and cast Stroke of Genius on your opponent forcing them to draw 62 cards
These hands should give anyone a good sense of how the deck works and the amount of mana the deck can create. The deck can and sometimes does win on turn 3. This usually requires either 2 High Tides early in the combo, or multiple untap effects, or an early Mind over Matter.
Matchups
Playing against an actual opponent is much different than just trying to combo off with disruption or pressure to win as soon as possible. Many of the successful Legacy decks will have disruption or countermagic to slow down Permanent Waves or they will present a quick clock that requires winning as soon as possible or even worse they will have both of these elements to make for a very difficult road to victory.
Counterbalance Threshold
This is probably the most difficult deck for Permanent Waves in Legacy. It has virtually every tool to slow it down with countermagic and presents a quick enough clock that Permanent Waves does not enough time to recover. Counterbalance by itself often can end the game, but the Green splash has proven itself here as even in game 1 you have the ability to Cunning Wish for Krosan Grip. Most Threshold decks do not have few if any cards at the three-mana slot, so Cunning Wish is one of the spells most likely to resolve. Even with access to Krosan Grip, game 1 is nothing short of very difficult. With cards like Force of Will, Daze, and sometimes Thoughtseize it is hard to resolve any relevant spells. Tarmogoyf and Nimble Mongoose make sure that you have little time to recover. The best strategy here is try to make sure Counterbalance does not resolve and try to fight through the rest of their countermagic. If they don’t find an early clock, try to use Meditate or even Cunning Wish for Fact or Fiction as a way to generate card advantage.
Postboard the game should get easier as you can board in 3 Krosan Grips for their Counterbalances and board in the 2 Fact or Fictions for more card advantage taking out 3 Ideas Unbound, 1 Turnabout, and 1 Candelabra of Tawnos. Having more answers to Counterbalance gives you a fighting chance. Fact or Fiction provides much needed card advantage without the drawback of losing a turn. Along with Force of Will and Cunning Wish to answer anything else they might have boarded in, you should have at least a chance to win games 2 and 3.
Canadian Threshold and Team America
These decks present a different challenge to Permanent Waves, but in general they are probably easier to beat than Counterbalance decks. They don’t have a way to lock you out of the game with Counterbalance and Wasteland is largely irrelevant. Stifle is useful here especially against the fetchlands and sometimes even in mid combo against Candelabra of Tawnos or Mind over Matter. These decks also have Force of Will, Daze, and either Spell Snare or Thoughtseize. This disruption can be difficult to recover from especially when followed by an early creature. The best strategy is to activate your fetchlands whenever they are tapped out and try to make as many land drops as absolutely possible. It’s also a good idea to either have a Force of Will or another High Tide when going off, as these decks often will only have 1 hard counter when you try to go off.
Postboard bring in the 2 Fact or Fictions for 2 Ideas Unbound as they can be cast before comboing off and can be especially useful if your opponent doesn’t find an early creature to generate pressure. They usually don’t have much to board in against you except Krosan Grip which you should try to minimize its impact by activating Candelabra after casting it or discarding multiple cards to Mind over Matter without passing priority.
Landstill
This is one of the better matchups for Permanent Waves. Landstill decks usually have too many dead cards and not enough countermagic or enough to pressure to really win games reliably. The best strategy is to make as many land drops as possible throwing out Meditates forcing your opponent to counter them or face being buried by the card advantage. The only really scary scenario is when they chain Standstills and draw multiple counterspells off of them and find a way to put some pressure on with a Mishra’s Factory or Tarmogoyf. Permanent Waves should win most of these games.
Postboard depends largely on what they board. You should board in 2 Fact or Fictions and a Wipe Away for 3 Ideas Unbound. Wipe Away is for any type of permanent they might board against you like Meddling Mage or Arcane Laboratory. This matchup can become more difficult if they have multiple cards to board for you, but this is still one of the better matchups for Permanent Waves.
Goblins
Goblins is not particularly strong in this matchup. It really needs a Goblin Lackey draw to have any chance of racing. Permanent Waves also has Force of Will and can sometimes win on the play on turn 3, racing even the Goblins turn 3 win on the draw. Goblins has very virtually no disruption to speak of except Rishadan Port, which you can conveniently evade with a Candelabra. When your opponent goes to port your land float the mana in response and after the port taps the land then tap the Candelabra to untap the land that was tapped by the port. Some recent versions of Goblins have begun to adopt Thoughtseize and these builds are more problematic. Permanent Waves should win most game 1s against Goblins,
Postboard again depends largely on your opponent’s sideboard, but if they have enough hate cards to bring against you then this could become difficult. The only thing to really board here is a single Echoing Truth for the Stroke of Genius. It hard to know what they will board, and you don’t want to weaken your combo much by boarding in multiple cards. Postboard games usually go longer depending on the disruption they have, but do not keep slow hands thinking they will try to disrupt you early in the game. They may still try to win off a Goblin Lackey draw with little or no disruption.
Conclusion
It still remains to be seen whether this deck is good enough in its current incarnation to compete with the best decks in Legacy. It still has problems with cards like Counterbalance, and is still slow enough that it cannot race most disruption in the format. It has also its strengths in that it more consistent than earlier versions and has the benefit like earlier High Tide decks of being more resilient when facing disruption or countermagic than other combo decks. Permanent Waves represents an attempt to take the best aspects of the two previous High Tides and meld them into one deck.
Until next time…
Anwar